As KOMO/4 reports, investigators have determined a small fire at a community precinct station at 23rd Avenue and Union Street was deliberately set. Authorities won’t say if the fire — which was reported at 3:30 a.m. and did minimal damage — was related to the recent series of protests against Seattle police.

The center had previously been vandalized by two anti-police activists, Patrick Joseph McGowan IV and Laura Ann Stahl, who pleaded guilty to malicious mischief charges after the pair smashed several windows at the community police station. Both were sentenced to community service.

Imposing the sentence agreed to by prosecutors, King County Superior Court Judge Catherine Shaffer told Stahl, 23, and McGowan, 27, their actions — an apparent protest of police brutality — were “stupid” and misguided, in that they only succeeded in making it more difficult for poor people living in the area to get police help.

The substation, a storefront office meant to improve community access to police, was opened near a particularly troubled corner, 23rd Avenue and East Union Street.

Shaffer chastised the vandals for attacking an effort to extend police protection to all residents of Seattle. Such facilities are an effort to break through “the blue line,” the judge said, and see that all residents of the city’s low-income, historically disenfranchised neighborhoods receive the safety enjoyed in the Seattle’s rich neighborhoods.

“We’re all entitled to equal treatment under the law,” Shaffer said. “What you really did was make it harder for low-income people to get police services.”

Offered an opportunity to address the court, neither elected to apologize for or explain their actions. Instead, they remained silent as more than a dozen supporters looked on.